What's "bullshit" is this sensationalist, out-of-context article and title. He did NOT say Halo is bullshit. In fact, if you look at the actual interview (which is linked at the end of that article), you'll see that the very brief part of his interview that relates to Halo only says that the characters are bullshit because they're generic, and then he moves on. In fact, he even says "Halo is not actually bad, it’s just, you know, average." The part of the interview relating to Halo at all was ALREADY so short that taking any more out only served the purpose of making the guy look like a dick and giving it an eye-catching title. Halo is one of my favorite series of games, and I love the plot, AND I agree with this guy. I always thought the characters were really generic and one-dimensional within an interesting and entertaining plotline.

I wouldn't put it at the top of my list of FPS titles, but as generic or "average" as it was, which I'd say is pretty accurate, the game was worth playing, and I did enjoy it; even if it doesn't make my top 10. A lot of good ideas came from the Halo universe, but the things that made me not like it had a lot to do with the story line, and very little to do with the game play.

It did bring a hell of an environment with the game. I think the setting is what sold it for me. We've all killed aliens, we've all been some kind of super solider or another before, but not many games have given us the option of fighting on rings floating in space with its own physics, and gravity.

Halo has a plot? The game is fine and all, if you're a console gamer, but frankly it was a laughable addition the field compared to PC titles of the time. You can't compare it to Half Life (1998) or Battlefield 1942 (2001).

People give the bland generic shooting aliens game far too much credit. I guess that's what a huge amount of marketing hype will do.

Um, its not like Crysis' story was anything amazing. You could pretty much tell whenever someone was going to die in, and I am pretty sure that beings from outer space made an appearance in both Halo and Crysis. If anything I think the Halo Universe is more interesting.

oh. Well if you ask me halo is a piece of shit, doom isnt. You created a situation where lead writer of crisis 2 takes a good game, and calls it fucking bullshit, in your case, Doom, in the original case Halo.

The thing is, Halo IS fucking bullshit, but Doom is awesome. It's not that I missed the joke, its that your joke was retarded for holding Doom in the same light as Halo. They are right, Halo is fucking bullshit. They ripped on a game that DESERVES to be ripped on, which would NEVER be Doom.

Fuck Halo. Did I still somehow miss the joke? It seems pretty obvious to me.

To me, Halo will always represent the mainstream hipster tastes, and how overwhelming they become, swallowing an original culture with bs pop culture, and the fucking morons who populate it. Fuck. Halo.

It says "Is he just going to do this for every other FPS in the last 10 years?"

See, this isn't the first time the lead writer of Crysis has called a game bullshit. A week or so ago he was saying the same thing about MW2. So....there appears to be a pattern developing. The original poster was asking that question because the Crysis writer seems to be going down the list of every popular fps and calling it bullshit. I took it to the extreme and went back 20 years to Doom.

Save the fanboy ranting for the Bungie forums when Reach is released....you'll need it. For it will be an epic multi-day flame war in which the Halo hipsters will defile your name and trounce on the legacy of Doom. Your future wife will have your babies because of your battles in that coming flamewar.....good luck.

I'm a little worried for Richard Morgan's sake here. While I certainly wouldn't disagree that Halo and MW2's stories were absolutely godawful, statements like this are only going to make it harder to live up to the standards he's setting for himself. Good storytelling while maintaining good gameplay, even on a conceptual level, is pretty hard to pull off.

I like how story for this guy is the same as dialogue... It's true some lines are cringe-worthy in Halo, but all in all a lot of work went into an epic story, going as far as seeing both sides of it in Halo 2...

At this point his only reference is him penning the story for an unreleased game so at this point this is purely a cry for attention and marketing for Crysis 2.

Yeah, godawful for Halo is a bit of an exaggeration, I shouldn't have grouped it that closely with MW2 (For which I still keep that particular adjective).

And yes, this is clearly attention-whoring. Still, seeing somebody advocate good storytelling in games is refreshing for me, because it seems lately that game story and experience have appeared less important to the industry than making boring, overdone games they know will sell.

I do not have any good feelings for Halo either, but put your money where your mouth is. I am not sure if this guy had anything to do with the first Crysis, but it did not have a great story by any stretch of the imagination.

Original as long as you haven't heard of the countless stories about rich people buying new bodies, or people losing their memory and having to try and recover it to solve a murder...

At least it doesn't have some sort of enhanced elite military character like the Halo story does...

OH NO I DIDN'T!!!

But it is a bit different... Kovacs is actually an ex-military, mercenary... nothing at all like just about every action character in the 80's & 90's... not to mention... the A-FREAKIN-TEAM!!! WOOHOO!!

Er, they did put him on ice though (well, digitally stored him) until they need his skills... you know, like Demolition Man. WAIT CRAP!!!

I'm more of a movie guy myself, but hopefully you aren't insinuating that ONLY books can influence other writers...

The wealthy copying themselves into other bodies? Like the movie Freejack? Wasn't that based loosely on a book from the 50s? Ah! There it is!

Maybe the part where someone hires a private investigator to help uncover lost memories which cascades into a huge action-adventure? I'm talking about "The Long Kiss Goodnight" from back in '96... what were you thinking about?

Do I really need to mention books, movies, comics, etc. that have an an elite "super" soldier? I mean really, the careers of Chuck Norris, Steven Segal, Sylvester Stallone, and many others have been built around that very concept.

What exactly about the book is original? Hopefully you don't mean some incredibly small facet that is largely inconsequential even to the book itself...

I'm not commenting on the quality of the book, which I'm sure you'll agree is high... but seriously, there's not much originality, just layers of influence combined with minor changes.

I agree the story in Halo could have done with a bit more work. It seems the writers decided to leave a lot of grey vague areas throughout the plot which sometimes works really well and sometimes leaves you feeling that the storyline is lacking.Storyline aside, the Halo universe and concept are fantastic! It borrows from Sci-fi just enough to be familiar (Flood/aliens) but is also very unique which makes it new and exciting. It's little wonder it spawned book and comic series, it is a playground that any decent author could put to good use.

There's a reason for this, keeping plot lines vague leaves more room for Bungie/Microsoft to create new games (or novels, DVDs, etc) in the Halo universe without having to re-work the overarching story of the series.

It leaves me kind of mad that the overall plot suffers so more money can be made.

I liked the plot for Halo 1, 3 and ODST, especially the terminals in Halo 3 that rewarded players for seeking it out. There's something to be said for a little ambiguity, as long as characters are developed enough (which I know is a whole different argument). Just one man's opinion.

the Halo universe and concept are fantastic! It borrows from Sci-fi just enough to be familiar

You mean stole the setting and mythology from Larry Niven's spectacularly awesome Ringworld series and slapped in characters straight out of Aliens?

but is also very unique which makes it new and exciting

Depends on the person. I'd read the books and seen the films so none of that was new and the gameplay, while solid, was nothing I hadn't seen before.

Don't get me wrong. The first Halo was a great game but it wasn't revolutionary in any sense of the word, unless you're solely a console gamer who has never read or watched some of the greatest sci-fi ever created.

Actually, it was revolutionary in the most important sense of the word, in that it revolutionized console first-person shooters. Every console FPS can essentially be oriented as pre-Halo or post-Halo; the mechanics have not significantly changed since the original Halo, while earlier games tend to have radically different controls or are missing features which are now considered absolutely essential.

If you don't believe me, grab a 12 year old kid and have him play Halo (he'd have been a toddler when it came out.) He'll pick it up right away. Then have him try to play Perfect Dark, a game that came out one year earlier. Odds are he won't last five minutes.

tl;dr: Revolutionary doesn't necessarily mean the greatest game ever. Halo just happened to be the right game at the right time on the right system.

Dont know why ur getting the downvotes, you are correct that a lot of the sci-fi concepts in Halo were borrowed (I prefer this to stolen).

With sci-fi it's often a case of someone having done something before. I haven't read Ringworld, but that kind of thing pops up a lot (Iain Banks Culture books have inside out worlds, Peter F Hamilton, nights dawn universe has similar worlds). Most great modern sci-fi is built on others works. I still think that Halo took these ideas to a great original place.

I agree, Halo did a great job with the source material but it wasn't original or unique in any way. The gameplay elements had all been seen on PC before (what I was alluding to with the "console gamer" comment which is where I assume most of the downvotes came from) and the story was, like I said, mostly derivative. There's nothing wrong with this, happens all the time (George Lucas took literal interpretations of Joseph Campbell's work studying the mono-myth to make Star Wars) but give credit where credit is due.

As far as story goes, Halo is not a patch on Ringworld or any of the other epic sci-fi of the last fifty years.

An ancient civilisation that is somehow closely related to humans? Check. (The natives on Ringworld are apparently human and humans are the only beings capable of using Forerunner technology in the Halo universe).

Advanced aliens use humans to use ancient technology? Check.

Humanity's evolutionary advantage is luck? Check. (Master Chief and Sergeant Johnson and constantly referred to as the luckiest people alive).

I could go on but I've only really played the first Halo game and read the Ringworld book, both of these a decade ago, so I can't quite remember everything that was similar. There are more, though.

I dunno. While it wasn't revolutionary it did help popularize a lot of concepts in the first person shooter genre. Vehicular combat, limited carrying weapons, regenerative health system. They may not be unique to Halo, but they implemented them all extremely well together and because of this these ideas have become standardized across the FPS genre.

Though I do agree, Halo is vastly overrated. And I would argue that in some ways it has changed the genre in a negative way. While I consider it a good FPS, it is not amazing by any means.

I'd have to agree with you. However, I'd argue Halo is unique because it implemented the gameplay concepts you mentioned in an extremely polished package. There are several games that outdo Halo in one or two of these gameplay mechanics, but I can't think of a single game that approaches Halo's level of polish in integrating ALL the concepts together. I mean, how many games today still feature a clumsy dual-wielding mechanic or vehicles that control poorly, or lack the player-gets-into-vehicle animation (players "disappear" into vehicles)?

Bungie has always done this with their stories. They tend to tuck a lot of the story away and make people work to find it. The history of the forerunners and their fight with the Flood was practically a series of easter eggs in Halo 3. If you want to know why they do it though, go look up the amount of story speculation on their previous games such as Marathon. Shit is insane.

Halo is about as unoriginal in much the same way that ANY story is unoriginal if you short-hand it and describe it generically enough. Some of the references might be more obvious, but it's not any better or worse than any other story I've read.

That being said, main video game characters are usually better remembered the less they speak. The most memorable characters are usually the most silent: Link, Mario, Ness, Cloud, (along with almost every main RPG character), and a whole slew of other characters. The main issue is that a chatty main character, unless he is superbly written (or Deadpool, who is the superbliest), creates a disassociation with the player. The less a character talks, the more a player feels like he or she is the main character. Some of it depends on the game style, but it's largely true across the board.

Story-wise, it's hard to argue for the unoriginality of the Halo story without using those same descriptions to showcase the lack of originality in any other story. Often, when asked for specifics, I've only heard, "Well it just is" or "well lots of other people agree with me." Sure, it might have similarities with other specific stories, but how many more "good" stories also appear to be derived from other works? I've rarely seen "unoriginal" used to describe God of War's story, yet much of the game is a copy-paste of Kratos into old Greek mythologies. You might as well just scratch out "Hercules" and "Perseus" (and a few others) out of the old Greek texts and just scribble in Kratos' name and you'll wind up with most of what turned out in the game.

Even something like Portal can be likened to 2001 or even One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, in an odd sort of way (Glados = Nurse Ratched, perhaps?).

Stereotypes existing in a story does not mean unoriginality. Similarities in personalities run rampant in real life far more than in movies, games, books, and other stories. Stereotypes usually act like a tack, holding up more abstract or harder-to-get story arcs and/or backgrounds. (WTF is all this religious stuff from these aliens? Ah! There's the hard-ass commander and the grizzled marine, I get that right away! Oh look! the stereotyped characters I immediately understand are explaining the stuff I don't... how convenient!).

Would Farscape have been as awesome if there wasn't a John Crichton, a somewhat generic and stereotyped character, that we could easily associate with? Stereotypes are a way to create a familiar character that the viewer/player/reader can associate with, without the need to meet the character beforehand. It's a technique well used in Halo. Sergeant Johnson wasn't a unique personality, but he was an awesome character in the context of the story. If you would really have him be a one-legged gay haberdasher with down syndrome, just to make the story "unique"... well, I can probably say with certainty that it would be a worse game. There's just no familiarity with a character that has that many unfamiliar attributes for the general populace. It also doesn't automatically make the story good just because it is suddenly unique.

Halo is about as unoriginal in much the same way that ANY story is unoriginal if you short-hand it and describe it generically enough.

I really liked your comment, it was well thought out and had quite a few examples. I want to take the time to point out this quotation though. I have to say that lately I've been seeing this kind of thing a LOT, especially with movies. Avatar is a prime example of being compared to Pocahontas and Dances with Wolves, for example. I mean, aspects of the plot are definitely similar, but as a whole, it is different if you consider characters, motivations, etc. However, Avatar is a weaker movie, in my opinion, because it doesn't develop characters, plot, or the environment like the first two do, mainly compensating with eye candy.

I mean, many movies, such as Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, follow the Hero's Journey (monomyth), very extensively. However, I rarely see these movies as being 'ripped' off one another or 'generic', even though they do have generic/stereotypical patterns.

Ultimately, if you dumb down anything enough, like Kaberu said, you can make any story generic.

"I didn't like Tomb Raider because it had exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and a resolution. Why not just plagiarize the entire works of Shakespeare?!"

Admittedly, some movies, like Avatar, you don't have to dumb down much at all to draw many comparisons to other films.

Did any of you read the any comments on this page at all? The guy didn't have anything to do with Crysis. He also didn't "slam" halo like the article makes it sound. He said its average, which it is. Its a fucking video game, why don't you go be outraged over important things.

im gonna get seriously downvoted for this, but i never really liked Halo. i preferred all the other FPS games out there, like counterstrike in the time of Halo 1, Unreal tournament when halo 2 came out, and Call of duty/ gears of war when halo 3 came out. it just did not compare to those games, in my honest opinion. beats me why people bought it. FYI i played halo for almost the same time as the other games, i just like the other games more :S

You've either never read a book/vidjagame script before (hero's journey? anyone? bueller?) save HALO, who don't get me wrong, HALO is a cool guy that doesn't afraid of anything... or you need to take a remedial english lit course. Monkeys could have written said game's plot with laser pointers and a room full of sci-fi movies/novels.

edit I'm sorry I focused on making a mockery out of your reply, but seriously, the word archetype is the fucking point of this guy's commentary on the game. The story is a complete amalgamation/rip-off/adaptation of a number of other IPs such as Ringworld and Aliens. This, coupled with controller-crippled FPS gameplay that's accessible to people who just can't move that fast apparently equals millions of *your *dollars.

HALO is not the guy's name. Seems to me like you've never played the game or else you would. And that remark about needing to take a remedial English class is well applied to yourself there buddy. And while I've never crisis, the fact is it's really well known only for it's graphics. And based on what I've read about the game it seems that it followed the archetype set by Master Chief or whoever you wanna say set that. Thing is this guy came after Halo and his game seems to be a pretty close replica of it. Fuckin hypocrite is what this guy sounds like to me.

i played through halo 1 and 2 and was very unimpressed by the story. it felt like it had a lot of promise, but it was just very generic to me. I didn't feel attached to any of the characters, especially master chief.

Well good thing he's just the writer and not the lead designer. I mean, writing off one of the biggest selling FPS game series of all time does not seem like the best idea. Especially when their own series of games have yet to match even a fraction of the sales.

ahem I play pc games on the pc, and console games on a console. My problem with halo is not the control scheme, it's the game itself. I found it bland and mediocre at best. Of course a mouse and keyboard is clearly superior in fps games, but it is not the right tool for every game out there.

They are just different tools that make the game flow differently, one isn't better than the other in the same way a screwdriver is not better than a hammer. It'd be different if you began mingling them within the online experience.

And the big deal with Halo is a lot of people found it really fun, and a lot of people didn't. You know, kind of like Half Life 2, Starcraft, WoW, Final Fantasy, Super Smash Brothers, etc... That's the way the world spins.

But don't you see that you're just putting your own interpretation of what defines "better" for a FPS? The console vs. PC experience of a FPS is markedly different thanks to the control scheme, and a lot of people are thankful for it. I, and others, like the more controlled pace, and casual interaction, of a console controller.

You seem to think "better" is super-fast movement and reaction, but I don't like PC multiplayer FPS because it makes the game more speed based and less flow-based. Additionally, interactions are often over in a much shorter period of time, whereas console interactions provide more lee-way for counters during an attack.

The point is, people like different tools. Your goal is to insert a nail, and my goal is to insert a screw. So who is right? As long as you're using a hammer, and I'm using a screwdriver, we both are. Can't everyone stop telling everyone else "You're doing it wrong because that isn't my way" and play their own way?

I agree with you. To be fair to the PC gamer crowd, yes--a mouse will always offer greater aiming precision. To confirm your excellent point, yes--dual joysticks will provide more fluid movement and, dare I say, greater precision of movement.

It's ultimately a matter of preference. I like to play my games in front of a TV, sitting on a couch with a few friends, perhaps drinking some brews. You can't do that with a mouse and keyboard. I also hate the whole twitch-shooting aspect of PC gaming. I prefer auto-aim. Maybe I suck, maybe I don't care enough. Whatever--I play to kick back and have fun.

Of my entire post, your only response is to the most unimportant part of it? The main takeaway is we each define what is "best" for our recreational activity for different reasons, and it is arrogant to make assertions of what is universally "best" when discussing an input preference for a recreational activity. It is arrogant because you implicitly state that your criterion of "best" should be my criterion of "best". Is it really so hard to accept that a huge number of us prefer the controller over the keyboard and mouse?

The reason the pacing in console FPS is slow is because the control scheme is slow.

Yes, I know, that is why I'm thankful for it. The controller forces a slower, more evenly paced game.

You can have a slow pace on the PC as well.

Indeed, but it isn't common because the controls are so much faster. Similarly, console games can become very fast paced (better Halo 3 players with maxed out sensitivity), but it isn't common because the skill is not widespread.

Ah well, I've said my piece. I just want some people to recognize that a big portion of gamers prefer the controller for a variety of reasons. Feel free to close out the discussion however you please. I will now turn on BC2 and use my "screwdriver", happily.

Whatever. This is just another person out of the millions (billions?) of people that know about Halo. His opinion means as much to me as another MW2 fanboy at my fucking highschool, although I agree that Master Chief could have more interesting lines.

The criticism is heavy handed, if he thinks that the Halo storyline and characterisations are crap then he should most certainly hate 90% of the games we play.

Still it will be interesting too see what he's done for Crysis 2, because it's his first game I don't know how well he's able to adapt to the medium and even though his philosophies are genuine how well they translate remains to be seen. If he can raise the narrative raise bar for video games then more power to him.

I totally agree, but his complaint about Halo is the cliche archetype. With Halo 1 it wasn't so bad at the time, I don't remember having an FPS protagonist so involved with the setting in 2001.

I think his complaint extends to Halo 3 because it didn't evolve their image, but I'm saying cliche archetypes are perpetrated by almost every FPS game. I think it's a somewhat unfair to criticise Halo like that because the series started nearly a decade ago and they've only built on that foundation without changing Master Chief.

Is it a good thing? It isn't. But at the same time take into the context of Halo history and there's an explanation for it. Even though Master Chief is a paper cut out with no emotive qualities he is in someway an original template.

I agree, to a point. Halo is your typical run of the mill Alien vs Humans (the rest of Universal powers) story. But, what exactly was the story behind the first Crysis? Halo had an intensely addictive multiplayer aspect which is saying something since, Crysis had what for multiplayer? I respect the development team behind Crysis, it was a graphical masterpiece, but this writer needs to shut up. It seems his recent applaud toward Uncharted 2's story telling seemed more of a, "ok, look, you've insulted everyone, can you say something POSITIVE at least?" which was simply picking last years GOTY winner.

He took aim at games that didn't necessarily claim to have the best story lines. MW2, Halo and Killzone 2. It isn't saying much, when he ignores, Batman:AA, Fallout 3, MGS4, Assassin's Creed 2, God of War 3, Heavy Rain... etc

And whether you work for them or not, you can say a lot by saying why he was brought on as a lead writer.

One thing you just made me notice, FPS games generally have weaker story lines than TPS (is TPS really a legit abbreviation for third person shooter?) games for some reason. I am definitely not saying all FPS games story suck, but many just do not have that good of a story line when compared to TPS. This is strange considering how similar storyline would be expected to be for such similar genres.

Personally, i found Killzone 2's story good for its genre. Half-life 1 and 2 are exceptions to the rule. But, it's true. He's calling out a genre that doesn't necessarily mean anything by bashing their story. Bioshock, Borderlands, MW, even Mirror's Edge had weak stories. Uncharted 1/2, Max Payne, Mafia, GTA 3 to San Andreas all held the story element. What is the major gripe with selling a FPS story? Player disconnection?

I think it is a subtle difference between TPS and FPS. While many of the game play elements are similar, in a FPS it is for the most part you in the action, while TPS you end up playing out the story of the character.

Most FPS are deliberately vague when it comes to the character you are controlling since it is 'you' in the game. Throwing too much personality into the character can break immersion if it conflicts with how the player feels about the situation, so they do tend to stick to archetypes. If you look at Bioshock 1, you see how little we question a lot of the ways FPss behave in regards to the player character.

Since TPS you are essentially controlling a character, they have a lot more freedom in giving that character a personality that won't match because we are spending the whole time watching that character (not switching from a FP game to TP cutscene). It is a perspective we are completely used to watching from TV and movies.

Most FPS can be summed up as You are this archetype, this is the situation, this is your objective. Even the best FPS's from Valve have essentially silent protagonists, we have more of a connection to the companion cube than the test subject we were controlling whereas games like AC2, GOW really let the characters develop.

Even when you change to the RPG hybrids, Fallout had a rich world, but still largely felt like there was no real feel to the role you were taking on while ME2 let you develop the character so that my Commander Shepard felt more real and personal to me than characters I spent most of the game in their head.

Fucking upvoted, but seriously, whatever it takes to make the story memorable. Too often people spend hours in it laughing away and just forget what happened. Nothing cohesive can be recalled because it's crowded by too many similar stories. Maybe have every 10th game narrated or something :D. The skewed perspective might even improve people's games.

PS: I would hope the story elicited by the experience comes to be something more than "I was playing CS then Morgan Freeman started narrating lolololol" More like "But I can remember what went down that game really clearly. The narrator made a note of the turning point of the whole counterterrorist's victory being something as seemingly small as a shot to the back of the head from an overlooked nook in the wall. Ever since that day, I've seen life as a sum of very small things. The fragility of the future, how unlikely this particular, beautiful moment was, It's astounded me."

The fact that you say stupid console gamers leads me to believe you wouldn't play console games. If you don't play console games then you haven't played the Halo series. How can you comment on something you haven't experienced? Oh hang on! Thats right, I'm on Reddit!